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US Launches New Strikes on Iran Over Strait of Hormuz Shipping Attacks  

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US Launches New Strikes on Iran Over Strait of Hormuz Shipping Attacks  


US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced Wednesday that American forces have resumed strikes against Iran, saying the operation is intended to further reduce Tehran’s ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. 

In a post on X, CENTCOM said: “At the direction of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.” 

The statement added: “The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway.” 

Iranian media also reported renewed military activity. Mehr reported hearing explosions near the city of Bandar Abbas, close to the Strait of Hormuz. 

The latest US military action follows comments by President Donald Trump at the NATO Summit, where he indicated additional strikes against Iran were possible. 

“We hit them very hard last night, very probably hit them hard again tonight,” Trump said. “They’ve been the bully of the Middle East, and they’re not the bully anymore.” 

The renewed strikes come after fighting between Iran and the United States on Tuesday. The clashes followed Washington’s reimposition of sanctions on Iran after three vessels were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. 

 

 

Lawsuit: Man used Grok to make 7K sex images of stepdaughter, then shot himself

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Lawsuit: Man used Grok to make 7K sex images of stepdaughter, then shot himself

One of the most horrific cases of allegedly Grok-generated child sex images was shared in a proposed class action lawsuit that was expanded Tuesday. Now, young girls not only accuse X and xAI of building toxic AI “nudify” tools but also of shielding child predators by obstructing police investigations into Grok-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM).

In March, a girl’s stepfather took his own life after cops discovered that he had used Grok to create 7,000 sexually explicit images using one photo taken when his stepdaughter was 11 years old, the amended complaint alleged.

Grok allowed the man to generate extreme images depicting incest and rape without flagging any harmful behavior, the complaint said. Seemingly, xAI’s child safety system only intervened after the man input a prompt for “gang rape.” That request sent a CyberTip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which alerted law enforcement to the AI CSAM.

Yet the harm was not stopped then, either. Despite mandatory reporting requirements to share information like a user’s IP address when CSAM is flagged, xAI repeatedly refused to help cops or NCMEC identify the user, the complaint alleged. For weeks, xAI allegedly “obstructed this investigation at every turn” and made it harder for “law enforcement efforts to locate, identify, and apprehend the perpetrator.”

Eventually, the stepfather was arrested after cops obtained a warrant to seize his devices. That’s when “a forensic review revealed approximately 7,000 AI-generated images and videos” depicting his stepdaughter, which were allegedly produced using Grok. Without Grok providing users with easy access to “undressing” capabilities, his family doubts he ever would have generated the harmful images, which he allegedly trafficked online in trade for “CSAM produced by other child sex predators.”

Two days after the man was released on bail, he shot himself, the complaint said, throwing the young girl—known as Jane Doe 4 in the complaint—into “a period of extreme personal crisis.” Among harms, she now suffers from anxiety and depression, as well as “struggles with suicidal thoughts.”

“Overnight, Jane Doe 4’s entire reality was shattered by the dual tragedies of child sexual exploitation and suicide,” the lawsuit alleged. “Her family was torn apart, and her life became a nightmare.”

xAI allegedly shielded predators

In a press release, the girls’ legal teams at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Baehr-Jones Law said that Jane Doe 4’s case is not an outlier. They noted that NCMEC found in early 2026 that 90 percent of xAI’s CyberTipline reports “were not actionable by law enforcement because xAI declined to include user information that would allow law enforcement to track and locate perpetrators.” As the lawyers explained:

“Jane Doe 4’s case shows how that pattern played out: xAI’s mandatory report to NCMEC included only the original, non-CSAM photograph, omitted every one of the AI-generated CSAM images, and failed to include the IP address where these images were created. Despite repeated requests from investigators for this location information that is critical for identifying and arresting perpetrators, xAI did not respond, stymieing the investigation for weeks.”

Allegedly, xAI avoids sharing this information to prioritize profits over child safety. In the press release, Jane Doe 4 accused X of going “silent” after Grok turned “a photo of me as a little girl sleeping on the couch, wearing an oversized panda pajama shirt” into “thousands of sexually explicit images of me—images so horrific I can’t even begin to describe them.”

“They had everything they needed to help law enforcement stop the person responsible and achieve justice. Instead, they remained silent and allowed this person to use Grok to steal my childhood,” Jane Doe 4 said. “This technology is a free, easily accessible weapon put into the hands of the worst people in the world. What is so dangerous is there is no way to prevent a predator from taking any photograph—not just a photograph on the internet—but any photo of a child and using this technology to create images from your worst nightmares. No one is safe—not adults, not children, not anyone.”

Another girl who came forward on Tuesday, Jane Doe 5, was also targeted by a known acquaintance, an adult family friend who similarly trafficked alleged Grok-generated images online. That girl was only notified after cops arrested the perpetrator and charged him with “extensive possession and distribution of CSAM content,” which was “limited to non-AI generated CSAM,” the complaint said.

Her mother blames xAI for Jane Doe 5’s abuse, saying that because of Grok, “my daughter is filled with anxiety and feels a complete lack of control over who has seen these images. No child should ever have to go through this.”

xAI founder Elon Musk has denied that Grok has ever been used to generate child sex images.

However, researchers have estimated that Grok’s lax safeguards—which allow users to make “spicy” requests to undress images—have harmed tens of thousands of kids without meaningful intervention. So far, xAI’s only action has been to charge for the feature, which the complaint alleged just ensures that xAI profits from all Grok-generated CSAM.

X and xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Stability AI yanked into xAI fight

In addition to adding more victims to the complaint, lawyers also added Stability AI as a defendant.

According to the amended complaint, Stability AI’s open-weight models were trained on CSAM and allegedly “serve as the basis for third-party ‘nudify’ apps,” which Grok users supposedly rely on to further alter explicit Grok outputs.

Like X and xAI, Stability AI is accused of deliberately relaxing safeguards to seize a market by allowing generations of not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content. The lawsuit alleged that “on information and belief,” prior safeguards preventing NSFW outputs were removed after Stability AI’s model usage declined due to user complaints that the model got too prude.

It seems that after the lawsuit was initially filed, cops discovered that two perpetrators targeting minors suing had apps on their phones relying on “Stability AI’s image-producing tools.” The complaint was therefore amended to allege that some perpetrators may have used either Grok or Stability AI-linked tools, or possibly both.

Because so many nudifying apps rely on Stability AI’s models, the lawsuit alleged that “absent Stability’s models, the derivative applications would not exist in their current form and would not possess the image- and video-generation capabilities that enable the creation of CSAM.” To back their claims, the amended complaint cited a June report where researchers found that the “Stable Diffusion family is the primary driver of image-based nudification” online and accounts for 42.7 percent of such images.

Stability AI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Thousands of victims may join suit

Since Stability AI has been added as a defendant, the lawsuit now seeks to cover two classes, one class for each tech company, as well as Tennessee subclasses for each class.

The xAI class covers all US persons whose “real images of themselves as minors” were altered using Grok “to produce images or videos of sexually explicit conduct or content with their faces and/or other distinguishing features reasonably identifiable.” And the Stability AI class includes US persons similarly harmed using “an app built upon a Stability AI model.”

Lawyers estimate that thousands of minors may be eligible to join the classes and continue to seek out victims harmed by AI CSAM.

NCMEC did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

However, the group has called for platforms, lawmakers, child safety organizations, and law enforcement to work together to address the “growing urgency for coordinated action.”

In March, NCMEC warned of a “sharp rise” in “reports related to generative AI” (GAI) in 2025. According to NCMEC, more than 1.5 million CyberTipline reports were made last year,  “indicating a nexus to GAI and child sexual exploitation.” Troublingly, in more than 133,000 cases, NCMEC “lacked sufficient information to determine how the technology was used.”

That report did not call out X or xAI, but it did suggest that it’s likely common for AI firms to avoid sharing information on AI CSAM that cops can use to make arrests. For another example, NCMEC noted that Amazon AI services submitted the vast majority of tips (1.1 million), and none of those tips gave “actionable information” that law enforcement could use to identify perpetrators.

As scrutiny on the harm inflicted on children by AI firms intensifies, advocates are hoping that firms will fine-tune models to block all nudity. Girls suing X alleged that’s the only remedy, “because if you have a model that allows for any sexual or abusive content, it is impossible to prevent that model from creating such content involving minors.”

In the press release, one of the lawyers representing minors, Annika K. Martin, slammed xAI and Stability AI as allegedly knowingly building models “capable of producing deepfake CSAM,” with “complete disregard for the devastation they knew would follow.”

“AI-generated CSAM is a scourge on society that touches every community and every demographic,” Martin said. “The scale of harm is staggering, and the companies whose products enable it must be held accountable.”

Child Climbs Out of Disneyland Ride Before Terrifying 50-Foot Drop (Video)

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Child Climbs Out of Disneyland Ride Before Terrifying 50-Foot Drop (Video)


Disneyland’s Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was brought to an emergency stop after another child reportedly tried to climb out of a ride vehicle — just weeks after a teenager plunged down the attraction’s 50-foot waterfall.

The latest frightening incident unfolded Saturday night when a Disneyland cast member monitoring the popular water ride through surveillance cameras spotted the child getting out of one of the log-shaped boats, sources with direct knowledge told TMZ.

The employee immediately activated an emergency stop, bringing the entire attraction to a halt before the situation could become even more dangerous.

The ride was temporarily shut down while cast members assisted the guests involved.

Sources said the worker’s quick thinking prevented the child from reaching the ride’s massive drop and potentially suffering serious injuries.

The troubling episode comes roughly one month after a 13-year-old guest climbed out of a log on the same attraction and fell down the 50-foot waterfall.

Video obtained after that incident showed the teenager sliding down the steep drop. The child was later taken to a hospital for evaluation.

Watch full video on TMZ

Disneyland officials said theme park attractions are temporarily stopped for a variety of reasons during normal daily operations.

A spokesperson said Saturday’s incident was handled appropriately by cast members, who stopped the ride so they could safely assist the guests.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which replaced Splash Mountain, features several water-filled drops, including the dramatic 50-foot plunge near the end of the ride.

El Niño is here, and it’s already scrambling fisheries throughout the Pacific

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El Niño is here, and it’s already scrambling fisheries throughout the Pacific

We’re not even one month into “super” El Niño, the natural Pacific weather pattern characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures, and fisheries around the world are already getting scrambled.

In Peru, government officials have effectively canceled the fishing season for anchovies, one of the country’s most important exports and a leading source of fish oil and animal feed globally. The Indian government is preparing for a season of smaller, less plentiful Indian mackerel. Meanwhile, in Southern California, recreational and commercial fishers have reported some of the most successful months of tuna fishing they’ve ever seen. 

The divergent situations show how El Niño can create winners and losers across the fishing industry, decimating some species while making others easier to catch. For fishers, the result is instability, with many forced to consider seasonal diversification. And consumers can expect fluctuations in the price of key fish products.

“People are worried,” said Juan Carlos Sueiro, an economist and fisheries director for the nonprofit Oceana Peru. As climate change is expected to drive more frequent, stronger El Niños, “our vulnerability is increasing.” 

El Niño is a weather phenomenon that happens every two to seven years in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It was named by Peruvian fishers who, hundreds of years ago, noticed periodic fluctuations in their catches, with huge declines occurring every few years around Christmas. They called it El Niño, after the baby Jesus.

The reason it has such disparate impacts on different fisheries has to do with the way it moves around ocean water. 

Under normal conditions, trade winds blowing west along the equator move warm water from South America toward Asia. This causes cold, nutrient-dense water to rise up from the depths, a process known as “upwelling” that encourages the growth of tiny algae near the ocean’s surface. During an El Niño, however, weakening trade winds slow or even stop this upwelling. Less algae at the surface means species that depend on it, like anchovies, are forced to search for grub in deeper waters. Not only does this make the fish harder to catch, it can also stress and shrink their populations.

At the same time, those ocean dynamics can boost other fisheries. El Niño often sees warm-water species like the skipjack tuna straying toward coastal waters of the Americas, where temperatures would normally be too frigid for them. Nearer to the shore, these species become easier to catch.

Both of these dynamics affect Peru, where El Niños of the past have both wiped out the country’s anchoveta fishery — the largest single-species fishery in the world — and increased the availability of shrimp, scallops, dolphinfish, and tuna. This spring and summer, coastal El Niño conditions have already strained the country’s anchovies, prompting the government to issue an indefinite ban on fishing for them during the April to July season so their populations don’t fall even further. Humberto Speziani, a Peruvian industrial fishing adviser and former director of the International Marine Ingredients Organization, said vessels equipped with sonar technology have been locating anchovies more than 100 meters below the sea surface. Even if commercial fishers were trying to catch those anchovies, they likely couldn’t — that’s twice the depth that’s reachable using normal purse seine fishing nets.

A fisherman carries a box with fish on a beach in Peru

A fisherman carries a box of fish at Chorrillos beach in Lima, Peru, in April. Luis Robayo / Getty Images

Seafood prices are liable to change, too, due to El Niño’s milder impacts outside the Pacific Ocean. Wild salmon, for example, can get so skinny from a lack of food during El Niño that they’re dubbed “snakes”; their decline in North American coastal waters can lead to higher ex-vessel prices — what fishers receive at the dock — that are then passed down to retail and restaurant customers. And in local Peruvian markets, prices for jack mackerel and corvina have already reportedly doubled, prompting families to buy more chicken instead. Sueiro said the opposite may happen with species like shrimp, whose populations have boomed during past El Niños.

One demographic that is likely to benefit from El Niño is Southern California fishers, who call the weather phenomenon a “special treat” due to higher-than-normal catches of bluefin tuna, swordfish, blue marlin, and other species that usually stay closer to the equator. Even before El Niño was officially declared in June, SoCal’s recreational anglers and commercial fishers were celebrating “unprecedented” bluefin tuna yields; one fishing tracker suggests that nearly 300,000 more of the fish were caught off the California coast during the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year.

“We’ve got yellowfin, we’ve got bluefin, yellowtail, and dorado. What else can you ask for?” the manager of one San Diego-based sportsfishing company said on YouTube at the end of April. “It’s not even May, and fishing’s been red-hot.”

Read Next

Although artisanal fishers in South America often catch more of these species, too, they’re unlikely to fully offset economic losses wrought by El Niño. For one, high winds associated with the weather phenomenon can frustrate shipping vessels, making it harder to reel in additional species. And heavy rainfall can damage onshore infrastructure needed to process marine animals and take them to market.

El Niño-related shifts in fish migration can impact more than fishing economies. High ocean temperatures associated with the weather phenomenon can decimate coral reefs and the species that call them home. They can also cause kelp to deteriorate faster, reducing the amount of underwater oxygen available to maintain healthy ecosystems. And there’s been some research to suggest that shifting fish populations can escalate geopolitical conflict, as vessels stray into other countries’ economic zones.

Arnaud Bertrand, a senior scientist at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, also worries about the Humboldt squid. These animals are an important income source for Peru’s artisanal fishers — they yield half a million tons of catch per year — and they tend to fare poorly during El Niños due to changes in prey availability. “If the Humboldt squid collapses, then you’ll have 10,000 boats that will try to find another resource,” Bertrand said. And because these artisanal fishers are less strictly regulated than commercial enterprises, all those boats looking for alternative species could have “huge, huge consequences for the ecosystem.”

Ultimately, the exact impacts will depend on how this El Niño forms and when its peak arrives. Exceptionally high temperatures in September could signal a more damaging El Niño, on par or similar to the disastrous one that struck in 1982. But even then, it’s hard to say exactly what will happen.

“Each El Niño is different,” Bertrand said, though climate change doesn’t make him optimistic. “With global warming, the worst is the most probable.” 


Another Trump Ceasefire With Iran Crumbles

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Another Trump Ceasefire With Iran Crumbles


The Trump administration’s phony ceasefire with Iran is over.

Maybe.

“To me, I think it’s over,” President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, referring to a preliminary truce inked in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June. That ceasefire, an American capitulation intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a key oil and gas shipping route whose closure by Iran was wreaking havoc on the global economy — never quite took effect. The price of oil spiked to its highest level in weeks following Trump’s Wednesday remarks.

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum,” said Trump, referring to Iran’s leaders, as he wrapped up his trip to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. “They’re cuckoo.” At one point in his remarks, the 80-year-old president claimed that a U.S. warship was attacked by the “the Islamic Republic of Japan.”

The June agreement between the United States and Iran, designed to usher in further negotiations toward permanently ending the war that Trump began on February 28, echoed another faux ceasefire, signed in April, which was also largely a fiction.

Trump’s statement that he “thinks” the ceasefire has concluded surprised one U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Shouldn’t he know?” the source said.

That official said the Trump administration had mismanaged the conflict and been repeatedly outmaneuvered by Iran, leading to a “twilight state” between war and peace, which has allowed Tehran to fortify its defenses and reconsolidate power. “He must be trying for the record of how many times you can lose the same war.”

An Intercept analysis found that, despite celebrating the June agreement as a victory, the Trump administration failed to achieve any of its war aims. For weeks, the White House has failed to respond to repeated requests for confirmation that the June ceasefire had collapsed and no goals of the war were reached. The White House did not reply to a question on Wednesday concerning the collapse of the ceasefire nor Trump’s claim of an attack by “the Islamic Republic of Japan.”

 

The United States attacked Iran on Tuesday, after reimposing sanctions on Iranian oil sales. U.S. Central Command said that it had struck “over 80 targets with precision munitions as an immediate response to Iran’s latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.” Iran did not claim responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks on commercial ships, including a Saudi oil tanker and a Qatari ship carrying liquefied natural gas in waters off Oman’s coast.

CENTCOM also claimed to have attacked “more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait.” U.S. officials have previously claimed to have completely annihilated Iran’s naval forces. “Their Navy is gone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on April 11, just after the first ceasefire was announced and fell apart.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator and Parliament speaker, accused the United States of multiple violations of the June ceasefire agreement, in a Tuesday post. “The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don’t fold,” he wrote. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement published on state media on Wednesday, that in response to U.S. violations of the ceasefire, it had attacked 85 U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait and also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.

“They’re vicious, violent people,” Trump said during his remarks in Ankara.

During the president’s war of choice on Iran, the U.S. and Israel struck more than 17,000 separate targets in 40 days — a rate of strikes almost unprecedented in modern conflict, according to the civilian harm-monitoring group Airwars. On the first day of the war, the U.S. attacked the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. In the weeks that followed, tens of thousands more civilians would be killed or wounded in U.S.–Israeli strikes, according to World Health Organization estimates. 

The official number of dead and wounded U.S. personnel stands at 426, an almost 11 percent increase since the first ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was struck on April 8. For months, The Intercept has reported that the Pentagon’s official tally of dead and wounded military personnel from the Iran war is a gross undercount, stemming from what another U.S. government official called a “casualty cover-up.” The Defense Casualty Analysis System, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known American casualties. The true number exceeds 625.

Trump vowed more attacks on Iran at the NATO summit. “I’ll give them a little warning we’re going to hit them hard tonight,” he said. On Monday, Trump threatened attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure that would “affect 91 million people,” almost all of them civilians.

“The child-killing and terrorist U.S. military in the early hours of this morning openly violated the ceasefire and violated the Islamabad understanding by launching an airstrike on a number of coastal bases and civilian stations,” the IRGC said in its statement.

CENTCOM claimed to have struck Iranian air defense systems, “command and control networks,” coastal radar sites, and other targets and threatened further attacks. “CENTCOM forces remain postured and prepared to hold Iran accountable when the agreement is not adhered to or obeyed,” the command posted on X.

After previously failing to make good on his pledge to ensure Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” since Tehran still maintains its stockpile of enriched uranium, Trump said on Wednesday that the U.S. would “de-nuke it.”

The U.S. official laughed when appraised of Trump’s pledge. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked of Trump’s denuclearization statement. The official said Trump had painted himself into a corner. “There is one word that describes this man and this war: a trainwreck.”

‘Let the people judge me’: how Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage learned a potent populist tactic from Donald Trump

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‘Let the people judge me’: how Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage learned a potent populist tactic from Donald Trump

The European populist right has been at the top of the political agenda in recent days.

On July 7, everyone in France was waiting expectantly for a Paris appeal court to decide on whether Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN), would be allowed to run in the 2027 presidential election after her conviction for embezzlement of European funds.

But just as the European media machine was gearing up for the verdict, across the Channel, Nigel Farage – the leader of Reform UK – announced on X that he would be making a “statement about his future”. This came after multiple allegations of undeclared gifts and an ongoing investigation into possible money laundering. Farage maintains that he has done nothing wrong.

The parallels were impossible to ignore. Here were two prominent European populist rightwing politicians whose political careers were being threatened by extensive and well-documented corruption claims. How would they respond?

We did not have to wait long to find out. Only hours after the verdict, Le Pen announced that she was now officially a candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Despite the fact that her initial conviction was upheld on appeal, she intends to contest the appeal court’s decision. This means she retains her presumption of innocence and is able to proceed with her election campaign as if nothing happened.

It is a remarkable sleight-of-hand; Le Pen has found the narrowest of legal loopholes through which to pass. In her announcement, she presented her decision as a democratic one: the French people should judge her, not the courts.

In the meantime, Farage told his supporters that he is stepping down from his parliamentary seat of Clacton after being made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry into his alleged improprieties. This will trigger a byelection – but, in an equally remarkable gambling act, he plans to run himself in the hope of winning back his seat. Again, he is suggesting that this means letting the voters decide whether he is guilty or not.


Read more: Why Nigel Farage is resigning as an MP, only to stand again – expert analysis


Le Pen and Farage are both reading from a well-thumbed playbook. The people v the courts; voters v judges; the “transparent” legitimacy of the ballot box v the “opacity” of lengthy legal and regulatory proceedings. All of these tropes will be familiar to observers of populist politics in the United States, Hungary or Turkey.

The bigger question is: do voters care whether populist politicians break the rules? Le Pen and Farage are hoping that, like Donald Trump, they can simply swat aside legal and regulatory processes on the road to their ultimate electoral triumph.

Question of standards

There are many reasons to take Le Pen and Farage’s arguments with a pinch of salt. A closer analysis of the relationship between the populist right and corruption reveals a more complicated picture, perhaps especially in France, which is gearing up for its most important electoral cycle in 2027.

At face value, Le Pen has little to worry about since French politics is famously corrupt. Every French president of the Fifth Republic, except Charles de Gaulle and Emmanuel Macron, has a major corruption scandal to their name. Both Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have been found guilty of corruption by French courts. They have been joined by countless MPs and mayors over the years who have been convicted of similar crimes.

Former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy leaves a Paris court in May 2026.

Former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was convicted on charges of criminal conspiracy in 2025 and sentenced to fice years in prison. His case is now subject to appeal. EPA/Yoan Valat

Until recently, this level of corruption was widely tolerated. French voters largely accepted that politicians would embezzle money, employ their family members on the public purse, or swing large public contracts for their benefit. They were more concerned with ideological faultlines than political integrity – and they displayed little of the hand-wringing that accompanied equivalent scandals like Watergate in the US in the 1970s or the “cash-for-questions” affair in the UK in the 1990s.

Yet this tolerance has begun to dissipate in recent years. Public anger towards politicians has reached unprecedented levels, most notably in recent protest movements such as the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests), and the deep personal hostility many French voters feel towards Macron.

Le Pen and the RN have provided a highly effective electoral outlet for this anger, and they have made much of their commitment to probity in public office. Le Pen even said herself that she would not run for election while wearing an electronic tag, and for many years the party campaigned for politicians found guilty of corruption to be banned from public office for life.

Rocky road to the Elysée Palace

But Le Pen and the RN’s role as standard-bearers of the “ordinary” French person’s rage against a “rigged” and “corrupt” political system is now under threat. By effectively stamping her dynastic authority on the party that was previously run by her father, and by blocking the rise of her young protege Jordan Bardella, Le Pen has boxed herself into a corner.


Read more: Le Pen to run for French presidency despite conviction – her protege Jordan Bardella would make a better candidate


Her only way out is by the ballot box. Yet the chances of her winning the presidential election remain slim. She – and her party – lack the necessary support to win in the second round of the elections where vote transfers from eliminated parties and candidates determine the overall result, and she still suffers from a credibility deficit in comparison to more mainstream politicians.

She may well have made matters worse by giving her opponents a powerful stick with which to beat her. Even in France, accusations of corruption can be hard to shake off. And, as Le Pen and Farage know from long experience, it is just as possible to lose at the ballot box as it is to win.

Aussie gov’t tells volunteers to throw out thousands of functioning test routers

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Aussie gov’t tells volunteers to throw out thousands of functioning test routers

Last week, thousands of SamKnows routers were bricked after a government program ran its course.

In 2020, as part of a program conducted by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian government’s chief competition regulator, thousands of volunteers received routers to help test and report on the typical speed and performance of broadband plans in Australia. (More specifically, the Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) program targeted fixed-line broadband services provided over the NBN, Australia’s government-owned wholesale open-access broadband network, as well as services delivered over other access networks.)

According to the final report that the ACCC distributed, the routers are whiteboxes that were “supplied by SamKnows” and that “perform tests to measure internet performance using test servers maintained by SamKnows and hosted in Australia.”

Last month, the program concluded, and the ACCC released its final performance report (PDF). Subsequently, the routers used for the program were bricked after June 30.

Ars Technica reviewed a copy of an email that an MBA volunteer received in mid-June informing them that the program would end on June 30, 2026 and further stating:

Service Termination: Your whitebox will be disabled, and your SamKnows One account will be closed.

The email, signed by “The SamKnows Team (part of Cisco),” noted that after June 30, the devices would stop collecting data and that users’ “measurement and registration data will be deleted in accordance with our retention obligations under our end-user license agreement.”

However, as one MBA volunteer pointed out to Ars via email, the routers are still working, making the decision to disable the devices an avoidable e-waste risk.

When asked by Ars, the ACCC didn’t specify the number of SamKnows routers disabled last month. However, in a report about the MBA program released in December 2020 (PDF), the ACCC said it initially expected to release about 4,000 whiteboxes throughout the program’s duration and had distributed “over 2,600″ by December 2020. The report noted that the ACCC retained an “adequate pool of whiteboxes to allow for the expansion of our reporting to cover, for example, emerging [retail service providers] and new speed tier plans.”

Salvageable

The volunteer I emailed with and who asked to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns noted that the whiteboxes run a custom version of OpenWRT, an open source, Linux-based operating system for embedded devices. This means the devices “can easily be reflashed into normal Wi-Fi routers with very decent performance,” they said.

The volunteer added:

I personally reflashed my own device (an operation that requires a soldering iron when you do it without company support), and it is now working great as a Wi-Fi router running OpenWRT. So everything already exists to do this …

Regarding hardware disposal, SamKnows’ email to volunteers reads:

You may unplug your whitebox and we encourage you to dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner. Free e-waste recycling services can be found at your Local Council & Resource Recovery Centre or your nearest Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi, or Harvey Norman store.

Still, the volunteer I spoke with believes that something better could be done to ensure that thousands of functioning routers don’t become trash.

“It seems a shame to me that these perfectly good devices should all be [disabled] simply because the company can’t be bothered to send out a final firmware update that opens the devices up to end users,” they said.

In a similar study, SamKnows distributed 9,000 routers to volunteers to help test Internet speeds in the US for a report published in 2011. The FCC and SamKnows haven’t publicly stated what happened to those routers.

In an attempt to learn why the routers were disabled, I reached out to SamKnows via the email used to contact MBA program volunteers. Although I received an emailed response saying that my message was “being reviewed,” I never received an answer from SamKnows. I also didn’t receive a response from ThousandEyes, the networking intelligence company that Cisco bought in 2020 and whose website SamKnows.com now redirects to.

When I contacted SamKnows-owner Cisco, a company representative told me, “Per SamKnow’s agreement with the ACCC, all inquiries related to the Measurement Broadband Australia program should be directed to the ACCC.”

It’s unclear whether Cisco had any say in the routers being disabled, even though it may have had the technological capability to help keep them running. Notably, Cisco acquired SamKnows in 2023, six years after the ACCC announced that it would use SamKnows for the MBA program.

I asked the ACCC why the routers were disabled instead of opened up via a final firmware update and for the ACCC’s response to e-waste concerns. A spokesperson sent a statement that didn’t answer those questions and read:

The ACCC delivered the MBA program with SamKnows, its testing provider. The SamKnows “Whitebox” is a dedicated hardware-based device that was provided to a few thousand volunteers accepted into the program. The device was manufactured and supplied by SamKnows and used to measure broadband performance as part of the program. With the conclusion of the Measuring Broadband Australia program, the whiteboxes deployed during the MBA program have been disabled and are no longer operational.

The statement also noted that “volunteers are encouraged to unplug their disabled whitebox and dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner via free e-waste recycling services.”

The relevant stakeholders appear reluctant to provide a clear explanation of why working routers were bricked when another solution was available. It’s possible that SamKnows/Cisco and/or the ACCC don’t want to be associated with future potential issues or concerns about the routers should the devices be updated for easy, continued use. On the other hand, some tinkerers have already shared details on how to keep the disabled routers working.

Oil jumps over 5% after Trump says deal with Iran ‘over

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Oil jumps over 5% after Trump says deal with Iran ‘over


Oil prices jumped ​more than 5% on Wednesday, hitting a two-week high after U.S. President Donald Trump said the ‌memorandum of understanding to end the conflict with Iran was “over”, renewing fears of disruptions to Middle East oil supplies.

Brent crude futures gained $3.82, or 5.15%, hitting $77.98 a barrel at 0832 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude climbed $3.70, or 5.25%, to $74.14 a barrel. The benchmarks are at ​their highest levels since June 23.

Both rose about 3% on Tuesday after the U.S. revoked the general licence ​authorising the sale of Iranian crude.

Speaking ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump said the ⁠interim pact to end the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran in February was “over”, adding he ​didn’t want to engage with Tehran.

“The latest developments have effectively thrown the future of the 60-day negotiation process into doubt,” ​said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB.

“In my view, a price closer to $80 a barrel is more consistent with current market fundamentals than $70,” he added.

The U.S. airstrikes were in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command ​said on Tuesday. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards then said they targeted U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait early on ​Wednesday.

Four oil and gas tankers have reportedly either decided not to transit the strait or been forced to turn around after Iran ‌declared that ⁠the only safe shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz is the one designated by Tehran,” said PVM analyst Tamas Varga.

After the U.S. and Iran signed their truce agreement last month, oil prices tumbled back to pre-war levels and traders amassed large short positions in oil futures, betting that prices would fall further.

Expectations of a wave of pent-up Middle East supply coming ​onto the market caused the ​price declines.

Iran did not ⁠take responsibility for the vessel attacks, but Qatar blamed Iran for them, including one on a Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker, which reported being struck by a drone that caused ​a fire in its engine room.

The attacks renewed concerns about tanker traffic through the ​Strait of Hormuz, ⁠which carried cargoes equal to about one-fifth of global energy supply before the war began in late February.

Since the start of the conflict, nations have drawn down their inventories to make up for the supply shortfall.

U.S. crude oil inventories fell again last week, market ⁠sources ​said on Tuesday, citing data from the American Petroleum Institute. Analysts polled by ​Reuters had expected crude stockpiles to decline by about 2.4 million barrels in the week ended July 3. ,

Source:  Reuters

Have a 401(k)? Help ProPublica Investigate What’s Really Happening to Your Money.

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Have a 401(k)? Help ProPublica Investigate What’s Really Happening to Your Money.

For some employees, the 401(k) system works great: They have easy access to low-cost funds with high returns. But many participants are stuck in investments with bloated fees and pay for costly advisory services on top — and may never know it because they’ve never scrutinized their plans’ disclosures. (If you’re worried this is you, our questionnaire below explains how you can check.)

As we’ve reported, the Trump administration wants employers to include less-regulated “alternative” investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans. To make that happen, the administration is changing regulations and pulling back on enforcement of the law that protects participants.

ProPublica is taking this opportunity to investigate these changes and the broader 401(k) system. To do this reporting, we need detailed insight into what’s happening inside plans: what products financial services companies are pushing and what fees they are charging. Many of these details are not made public, but they are disclosed to plan participants. That’s why we need to hear from participants in these plans, employers (particularly small-business owners) and those with expertise in the industry. The more people we hear from, the better informed our reporting will be. 

Note: We are not asking for anything that shows your account balances or personal information. If you have a 403(b) plan and work for a private, tax-exempt organization, we’d also like to hear from you.

Our team may not be able to respond to everyone personally, but we will read everything you submit. We take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these materials for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part. 

If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips.

Concentration Camps Inside a Concentration Camp: Israel’s New Plan for Gaza | Palestine This Week

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Concentration Camps Inside a Concentration Camp: Israel’s New Plan for Gaza | Palestine This Week

In this episode of Palestine This Week, we examine Hamas’s decision to dissolve its government and the wider implications of Trump’s so called peace plan, as Israel moves ahead with proposals for “controlled humanitarian zones”.

In this episode of Palestine This Week, we examine Hamas’s decision to dissolve its government and the wider implications of Trump’s so called peace plan, as Israel moves ahead with proposals for “controlled humanitarian zones”.

We also discuss whether Hamas remains a major threat or has become a convenient justification for continued Israeli domination, before turning to new claims about 7 October, debates over just war theory, Zionism’s erasure of Palestinians, Mike Huckabee’s remarks in Jerusalem and reports that US officials feared Israel was plotting to kill Iranian negotiators.

WATCH: Podcast by Jasim Al-Azzawi with former CIA analyst Larry Johnson & Ray McGovern

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